Wasim Akram gives M D Crowe a verbal high-five: “I have bowled to both Tendulkar and Lara and I have found Lara more attacking. Tendulkar has a tighter technique, no doubt, but Lara can single-handedly win the game for his team…If you are asking me who the best batsman I have bowled to is, then it’s not Tendulkar and not Lara as well. It’s Martin Crowe… he was an amazing batsman.” Hogan, you rule - no wonder I had your Test run aggregate as my PIN number for a decade. Back in 1990, Crowe was forced to add a grille to his safety armoury for the first time in his career as he faced Waqar and Wasim on their bottle-cap infested patch. He did OK though, with the highlight being an epic 554-minute 108 at Lahore. Crowe has scored more runs than any other NZ batsman against Pakistan.

Coney and Chatfield in Dunedin, 1985: In one of the nation’s most thrilling Test matches, 278 was the target and the six-and-a-bit finest hours of Jeremy Coney were upon us. Self-confessed curmudgeon Ian David Stockley Smith departed and at 217/7 it was all but over, even before Cairns was KO’d by Wasim Akram to effectively make it 217/8. The recalled Bracewell B was back in the pavilion 11 runs later, and NZ still needed 50 to win with the most notorious batsman in NZ cricket history wandering meekly to the crease: E J Chatfield in the world’s baggiest vest. By tea, seven had been crossed off. In the final session, Coney was dropped on 97 from the first ball and the tone was set. As the Wisden Almanac described: “Chatfield showed such willingness to take the strike that in their unbroken, match-winning stand of 50 he had 84 balls to Coney’s 48. Coney reached his second Test century and Chatfield made his best Test score, his runs being almost outnumbered by his bruises.” Legends.

Thomson and Young mow down 324: This was a face-saving win for New Zealand having already lost the Test series. Blonde-maned horse-lover Shane Thomson joined grocer and wicketkeeper-cum-opener Bryan Young with NZ teetering at 4/133. Crucially, Mark Greatbatch and Andrew Jones were back in the dressing room. But the two ND team-mates set about forging one of the most memorable partnerships in NZ Test cricket history, hitting maiden tons, and leading the charge to a brilliant win. It also gave anorak wearers the country over a mouth-watering record: NZ’s highest-ever fourth-innings total to win a Test. (It is a travesty that the efforts of these two players in compiling this magnificent partnership have since been undermined by allegations against players of dubious repute. The Commission of Inquiry’s report here makes Read more…

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It happened again last week - a limp test match performance against Sri Lanka with face saved only by yet another piece of Daniel Vettori batting prowess; followed by a much more convincing showing at limited overs cricket. It leads us to the question, and not for the first time: Why is New Zealand so poor in test cricket? Or, put another way: Why can’t the other Black Caps bat as well as Vettori? Paul Lewis investigates.

It’s embarrassing. As we pointed out in these pages last week, over the past three years, skipper Daniel Vettori is the top or second-top scorer in around one out of every three tests - and that from a No 8 batsman who, by any measure, is not the most attractive nor most talented bat around. We typically see Vettori leading a fightback, face pinched with concentration, defending well and waiting for the ball to come from which he can score. He has a good eye, a small array of shots from which he can profit and is a vastly experienced cricketer with a deep well of guts and stubbornness. He averages in the 30s and 40s for his last 2000 runs in test cricket.

These are qualities this country has previously come to expect from its test cricketers. Fans were raised with few genuinely world-class players like Richard Hadlee, Glenn Turner or Martin Crowe to enjoy. Instead, many well-performed New Zealand batsmen came to the international game with solid defensive techniques and a determination not to sell their wicket cheaply; to occupy the crease, bat time, outlast and out-manoeuvre.

We’re talking your Bevan Congdons, the skipper when New Zealand won its first test against Australia in the 1970s and who made a pair of centuries in successive tests against England, Read more…

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